


A Guy Walks Into a Bar

by SBG



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:17:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SBG/pseuds/SBG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny suffers a major injury and sometimes, well, sometimes there is no magic TV medicine to make things all better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Guy Walks Into a Bar

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I'm sorry, okay? It's all a bit vague. Unedited right now, and I might fiddle with it even after posting. The title might change. But probably not.

The machines hammered home how bad the situation was. It wasn’t that he hadn’t understood the cautious tones of the doctor or the grim words used in an attempt to prepare him. On some level he had definitely understood what it all meant, but from the moment it happened until the moment he stepped into the intensive care unit, Steve had been able to suspend reality. He’d always been able to do that in the field, shut down the higher levels of thought to get the job done. Freaky superSEAL stuff, Danny would call it, stuff that his partner claimed made him not human. This had been a different application of the same technique, the need to shutter all emotion just to keep upright, and it was one his former SEAL team would scoff at, call him soft for.

In some ways, they would be right. In all the ways he’d forgotten were as if not more important until he had someone to remind him, they would be so wrong.

He knew, too, it wasn’t only about the machines that made it so very real but who was attached to them, looking far too frail and inanimate. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Danny was a man of small stature, his personality was big and bold and took up a lot of space. Steve never thought they were anything but well-matched, though their styles were vastly different. Now, his knees felt just a hair weak as he studied the pale face and the livid bruise along the cheekbone, the way it trailed up into the receding hairline. The bruise had had time to deepen, the swelling to increase. _He_ hadn’t had time to process the attack or how it had all gone down, with both him and Danny caught off guard. It shouldn’t have happened. Danny shouldn’t be lying there, life being assisted by machines. He’d been breathing on his own, before.

“Danny,” Steve said, intending to apologize, but he couldn’t get the words out once his hand touched the cool skin of Danny’s forearm.

He let his legs give at long last, falling more than sitting in the chair someone had pulled up close to the bed. Steve leaned forward, rested his head on the edge of the thin mattress and shut his eyes tight.

_“For old times’ sake, I’d like to point out that we should wait for Chin, Kono and SWAT,” Danny said, as he pulled the straps of his vest tight._

_“Statistically, we do just fine without backup and using SWAT here is just plain ridiculous,” Steve said, with an expression he knew Danny loved to hate plastered all over his face. “What’s with the regression, Danny? We’ve made such progress over the past few years.”_

_Danny grumbled. It was what he did, and while Steve did find it amusing, he always considered Danny’s warnings. Simply more often than not he had confidence in his plan, his skills and his team’s skills and rejected the calls for caution in a span of time that made it appear dismissive. Danny actually knew this, but it didn’t lessen his aggravation at all, or his steadfast belief that the cop way was the best way to go despite the results Steve got. Every partnership had its stumbling blocks and repeated arguments. This was their professional one, kept alive only by Danny’s insistence on not letting it go. Every few months he’d get that bee in his bonnet and they’d do a thing, multiple times over._

_Normally, Steve might agree to wait for Chin and Kono at least, who were en route and closer than SWAT, but he itched to get moving. He and Danny could have the recon done before the others arrived. Intel had the building vacant – it was a staging area and storage, mostly, and the warrant they had was only to collect evidence to tie Kekumu to the bigger operation. This was cake. As per usual, Danny’s grumbling led to him doing exactly what he always did – backing Steve up with confidence and competence many overlooked. Truthfully, if Steve did not have the right person at his side, he might wait on most of his ops. The point was moot, because he had the exact person he’d always been looking for. He signaled for Danny to go left to his right and grinned delightedly at his partner’s eye roll and immediate departure for the more secluded side door._

_The building was a partially developed office space, but it wasn’t in a prime location. Various businesses had tried to make a go of it, all failed, and it had now sat empty for several months. Officially empty, at any rate. Unofficially, Kekumu and his associates had found it the perfect stationary selling point and sometimes production lab for meth. Meth wasn’t usually high enough on the crime spectrum to warrant Five-0’s involvement, and had Kekumu not invited the Triad to the islands, it might have remained in HPD’s capable hands. Governor Denning was worried about an international incident, the Chinese mafia not ones to restrain themselves._

_Steve made quick work of letting himself in and clearing the large empty rooms one at a time, working toward the middle of the building. He was about halfway through when it started to occur to him that something was off. He scowled at the burners set haphazardly out in the room, all of which he’d expected, but he couldn’t pinpoint what was pinging him. He exited the room and moved to another, which was precisely set up as if someone was planning to have a meeting, a few tables and chairs scattered around. It all looked like it had just been put there, not that it had been used for at least a month. There was no detritus, no sign humans had been there except to drop off the unused beakers and burners and tables. He caught sight of Danny leaving a room down the corridor opposite to him, garnered his partner’s attention with a hand gesture._

_Danny shrugged and waggled a hand in the air to signal his uncertainty. Steve knew how to read Danny pretty well, had even before they’d taken their partnership to a personal level, and he saw the same uneasy look on Danny’s face as he felt himself. Two rights never made a wrong, and now he had the strongest instinct to get out. He bobbed his head toward the front exit, Danny bobbed his had in return and both began backing to where they’d entered, wary and alert, though they were the only ones there._

_One second they were alone. One second Danny looked straight at him, eyes sharp. The next, some piece of shit punk came out of nowhere behind Danny, from the rooms that should have been cleared. Steve saw it coming, had barely formed the warning shout when there came a sickening thud of a rebar crashing into the side of Danny’s head as he turned toward the perp. The sound almost made Steve flinch as it resonated through the air and seemed to echo. There was no other sound like it, hollow and yet not, somehow wet and shit, shit. Danny went down in a heap, without an attempt made to halt his descent._

_And then a rain of bullets forced Steve to take cover._

He’d been pinned, both by the gunfire and the gravity of Danny sprawled and unmoving on the floor. Though he had been trained to remember every detail and catalogue ops for accuracy in reporting, the latter was the only thing indelibly inked onto his memory. It was also the last thing he _wanted_ to recall in such minute detail. He was a man well-versed in not getting what he wanted, at least not what truly mattered, and right now Danny was the only thing that mattered. Steve lifted his head and took Danny’s cool, unresponsive hand in his. If this made him soft, then he’d wear it like a badge, but he would do just about anything to keep what he wanted in his life. What he needed.

Kono said if she and Chin had gotten stuck in traffic and not made it to the location when they did, she wasn’t sure what they would have found. Steve knew. Danny wouldn’t have gotten the help he needed in time, and Steve might have followed him out of sheer unwillingness to go on without him.

Steve understood the prognosis was grim. He’d saved all of the possibilities as the doctor laid them out in the back of his mind, even while everything was still a blur around him. He heard them again as he stared at Danny’s beautiful face marred by that ugly bruise. Memory problems, long term or short. Personality change. Loss of motor skills. Aphasia. The list went on and on and it was scary. It was too soon to know what it would be that Danny suffered, but he _would_ suffer at least one, more likely a combination. The very name of his injury included the word traumatic. 

One perfectly placed, awful hit, and Steve very well might have lost Danny right then and there.

“Danny,” Steve said again. “I’m here. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere unless you’re here too and we go together.”

H50H50H50

There were two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes in two days and Steve remembered every single one of them. He recalled every time the physician came in and the small frown he’d get, signifying displeasure with Danny’s lack of progress. He could construct a mental chronology of images of Chin and Kono based on their levels of fatigue when they made their brief breaks while continuing to work the case. He would especially never forget the wide-eyed look on Grace’s face when she stepped through the door for a visit after school, the fear at seeing her father in such a state had fairly radiated from her. The expression that had been wretchedly painted on her sweet face encapsulated everything that he felt himself, the sorrow and pain and dread.

Danny wouldn’t have wanted Grace to see him in this condition. He had made sure to have that particular conversation with Steve even before they’d acted on that thing they’d both felt from day one. He’d thought he’d understood the position; both of them were all too aware of the dangers that were part and parcel of their career choice, after all. So he got that, no, Danny hadn’t _wanted_ Grace to ever see him broken and still, but he’d also said he didn’t want to withhold the truth from his girl. Good, bad or ugly, he said Grace deserved the truth. Danny had always said he didn’t want it to be more difficult if, if … ultimately, he didn’t want to leave this Earth without having given Grace the chance to see him, say goodbye even if she didn’t know that was what she was doing. After a day of no change Steve had made the call he’d never wanted to, had never truly got it until he saw what it did to Grace.

He’d known it was a mistake almost immediately. When he felt Grace’s quaking shoulders beneath his hands, it had all felt too much like he was giving up on Danny and, agreement be damned, Steve flat-out refused to let her back in until his partner was awake and not reliant on machines for life. Steve also refused to believe that wasn’t the exact way this was going to end, despite knowing every minute Danny wasn’t ready to breathe on his own made the road to recovery all the more bumpy. 

Danny was going to wake up because Steve and Grace needed him to so very badly.

It wasn’t the most logical stance to take, but then if Steve had followed logic in the first place, he’d have never given him and Danny a chance. He distinctly remembered telling himself how logical it was to recruit (strong arm, Danny liked to say) Danny from HPD, where he’d been unwelcome and underused anyway. And that much of it was true; professionally, it was a logical, sound choice. From the personal perspective, however, he might just as well have shot himself in the foot, having the constant temptation that was Daniel Williams at his side every day. Not even friends-with-benefits visits from Catherine had put so much as a damper on that zing of attraction he had for Danny. At the end of the day, the decision to make Danny his partner turned out to be far more illogical than logical. 

_By the time they got back to the car, Danny had worked himself up into a full head of steam. Steve tried not to be amused by it, he really did, but the image of his partner falling ass over teakettle into that lake-sized mud puddle had been right out of a Stooges movie and the over-the-top indignation only made it funnier. Through some tiny stroke of luck amid what could only be called calamity, his partner hadn’t inhaled or swallowed any of the muck, so Steve had to admit he didn’t try all that hard to disguise his mirth. No harm had come to anyone._

_The first few angry windmills of Danny’s arms had sent muck splattering every which way, like a Jackson Pollack. He’d defy anyone not to find that hilarious. It continued as they walked, and he had to let Danny get ahead of him so he could let his own smile shine free, and for … other reasons. His eyes flicked down, his attention rested on that other reason it was beneficial to let Danny take point._

_“And if you think I don’t know you’re smiling like a jackass back there, you’ve got another think coming,” Danny said. He halted and spun to face Steve._

_Steve quickly brought his eyes to Danny’s face. Too late, by the curious look he thought he could see through the mud marring Danny’s features. Keen eyes studied him. He did the only thing he could – kept the smile in place, maybe widened it._

_“See?” Danny flung an arm out. A previously hidden bank of mud plopped to the ground. “You think this is funny.”_

_“Well,” Steve said, looking Danny up and down with the hope that, too, would allay suspicion._

_The tragedy wasn’t getting busted wearing that jackass smile, it was the loss of his sightline of Danny’s ass. Steve had had a soft (or hard, depending) spot for it from day one – he was a red-blooded guy who saw advantages to both women and men, it was only natural – and in his experienced opinion, on a regular day Danny had what was arguably the finest ass on O’ahu. With the dress pants sodden and clingy and leaving nothing to the imagination, the argument went out the window – it was definitely the finest ass._

_As a consolation, the front view did highlight Danny’s tendency toward shirts that were worn a smidgen too snug these days. Not that Steve would a) tell Danny that, or b) complain. To mention it would make the button-popping shirts disappear just for spite, probably behind an ugly, sloppily-tied tie. Steve’s attention caught on the way the wet mud also made the shirt clingy, and how there really wasn’t an ounce out of place on Danny._

_“Here I thought you were making progress,” Danny said. “Animal.”_

_“Said the guy who just rolled around in mud like a wild boar,” Steve said with a laugh that felt like it had stuck in his dry throat._

_Danny glared, something he did gorgeously. Long story short, Steve thought, he had no idea what he’d been thinking, inviting that kind of enticement to his side every day. It had taken him all of four hours to realize he’d made a boneheaded decision, and the years of wanting something just out of his reach felt infinitely longer. It felt like he’d wanted Danny forever, and was glad he’d been trained to withstand torture or he’d have been toast long ago._

_“Door.”_

_“Door?” Steve asked, honestly puzzled._

_“I don’t want to get mud all over my car, inside or outside, Steven, so if you’d do me the favor of getting the door for me, I’d really appreciate it.”_

_“Sure, and let me lay down a tarp for you while I’m at it.”_

_“Thank you for not making me ask. I take it all back, you are an officer and a gentleman.”_

_Steve shook his head as if he thought Danny were being ridiculous, when in reality he instantly went to that old fantasy he had of his involving him wearing his dress whites and Danny wearing nothing. More to avoid any embarrassment from physical issues, he gallantly opened the door and then rummaged through the trunk for a few beach towels he knew were there for those rare occasions Grace and Danny came to his house. He made a big show of covering the passenger seat, amusement proving to be the best distraction. Everything about Danny just made him so all-fired fond of the guy._

_He got them on the road, but instead of returning to HQ, he decided that a pit stop was necessary. Steve enjoyed the hell out of Danny’s misfortune, but he didn’t feel much like sharing today. He wasn’t jealous when Kono teetered on the edge of flirting with Danny or Chin’s eyes got all warm with a fondness too similar to what he felt himself. Nope. Well, if he was, it was a simple, human reaction. No one else needed to see Danny with his clothes clinging in all the right places._

_“Really?” Danny asked as Steve pulled the car up in front of his apartment._

_He sounded so amazed Steve was almost offended._

_“You need to clean up,” Steve said as he foolishly leaned over to open the door from the inside rather than going around to the outside. The heat Danny put off felt scorching. He fumbled with the handle, nearly ended up in Danny’s lap. “Unless you want to go back looking like that.”_

_“Noooo.” Danny dragged the word out, giving Steve another funny look. “Thank you.”_

_Steve led the way, as he had the keys and also for his own sanity. Now more than ever, he was certain there was something wrong with him. He was about to go into Danny’s small apartment and wait for him while he stripped down to nothing and soaped himself up a few mere feet away. The image came unbidden into his head, fueled by those hugging Danny’s trim body. He dropped the keys trying to get them in the lock. Behind him, Danny cleared his throat._

_“Sorry.”_

_“Don’t be,” Danny said quietly._

_He wouldn’t be able to say exactly what it was about the tone of Danny’s voice that made him turn around to glance at Danny as he let them into the apartment. He wouldn’t even be able to say exactly how it all went so illogical so fast, but the searing stare he caught Danny giving him and the way it didn’t abate even at his notice absolutely was a major contributing factor._

_“Danny,” he said._

_“Seriously. Right now. Me, covered in filth. Seriously?” Danny shut the door behind him, then scratched at a dry patch of mud on his neck. “You are so you.”_

_Danny wasn’t … Steve had never let it enter his mind._

_“What does that even…?”_

_What it meant, apparently, was Danny’s muddy body pressed against his, Danny’s tongue in his mouth, Danny’s hands on his ass. It meant Danny took the first big step and they both took the next together, and holy shit was it better than any of his multitude of dreams had come up with, spontaneous, clumsy and right. It meant Danny most certainly did. And it also meant that Steve was the one covered in mud when Chin called and pulled them to a scene. Of course, Steve would have appreciated it if Danny had made a real attempt to lessen the obviousness of the handprints on his backside, given the way he’d managed to shower and change himself before the call came in._

_But it had been fairly illogical of him to expect it._

It had been a full month before Chin pulled him aside to inform him that the beard burn had been (and still was) the major incriminating factor, not the mud smudges on his ass. Steve had to smile, though his eyes were watery with the memory and exhaustion and dogged, inescapable fear. Danny’s face was getting scraggly, the hairs growing more slowly than usual, but still demonstrating the passage of time. If Danny woke up now, Steve wouldn’t give a damn about the rash he’d get from all the kissing. He wouldn’t object the next time Danny got it in his head to boycott razors, even though he did not care for the hobo look. 

Steve really needed Danny to wake up, and to pull one more illogical thing out of his proverbial hat, simply because he didn’t know if he could go back to living the way he had been without Danny. It was Danny who had started them with that sweet, illogical surprise; he could do it again. He could prove them all wrong and overcome the odds. He squeezed Danny’s fingers.

Danny squeezed back.

H50H50H50

The sound of shattering glass came seconds before Grace flew through the kitchen door. She passed Steve, shirking away from his touch with practiced ease. He watched her flee to the lanai and the beach beyond, clenched his fists to contain his anger. It wasn’t Danny’s fault, he reminded himself. He knew he should bring Danny the broom and dustpan – they had it down to a routine these days. There was a time when Steve would have rushed in and cleaned the mess himself, fearful for Danny’s safety. That felt like so long ago. Now, now he was tired. He didn’t have the energy to go in there and have the same conversation (argument) with Danny that he’d had countless times already. He didn’t have the heart for it, either, could never quite stop looking for what wasn’t there.

Steve knew his own limits as well as he knew Danny’s. Right now, he needed some air and he followed Grace out. There were silver linings to every situation, he knew that better than anyone. With this situation, his silver lining was Grace. He liked to think that he was hers in return. Approaching slowly to give her time to compose herself somewhat, he heard her stuttering breaths, saw how her shoulders shook. He was reminded of that day six months ago, the day they’d both lost Danny. 

“Hey,” Steve said as he eased down next to her on the lawn, stretched his legs into the hot sand. He bumped her shoulder with his elbow. “You okay?”

Grace’s initial response was to burrow her bare toes deeper into the sand, hunch her shoulders, and press her forehead against her drawn up knees. The question was a stupid one. She wasn’t okay. None of them were. He didn’t push; he knew this routine well too. The surf used to calm them both when things got bad, but more and more often it left him feeling restless. 

“I just want Danno back,” Grace said after a few moments, her voice muffled and thick with tears. 

It was here he was supposed to offer encouraging words, hopeful and positive and bright in the face of this emotionally draining _life_. Steve was supposed to say that one day Danny would be who he used to be, one step at a time, tell Grace to keep her chin up. Tell her that she was doing an astounding job of coping with a father who used to dote on her but now could cut her down with harsh words and violent reactions to inane infractions. He should tell her to try to love the man Danny was now.

He wanted to tell to hold on tightly to the times when their Danny poked through, like the sun breaking through storm clouds. 

_The breeze against his sweat-slick skin made Steve shiver and wrap his arms more snugly around Danny. He hadn’t believed they’d ever get this kind of intimacy again, but “they” all said Danny’s progress was remarkable in every respect. It was times like this he thought, hoped, they were right. For medical professionals, the gauge was different. He understood that none of them could truly get what it was like to live with someone with as many issues as Danny had on a daily basis. They all had pieces, bits of Danny a few hours a week._

_Steve had Danny every day. He had Danny when he cursed and railed about nothing, when he dropped his fork fifteen times during the course of one meal, when he couldn’t remember twenty minutes ago. He ran his fingers through the curled, damp chest hair, nuzzled his nose against Danny’s neck. He wanted it to stay this way forever, loose and sleepy and still inside Danny, the way they used to keep their connection as long as possible. Perhaps it was desperation, an unrealistic dream._

_“You don’t have to,” Danny whispered, gentle and sure._

_“I don’t have to what?” Steve asked. He licked at Danny’s neck, loved the way Danny hissed and pressed back against him. He smiled._

_“Stay.” Danny turned toward him, hissed again at the drag of Steve in him. “You don’t have to stay. With me. I know it’s … I know, Steve.”_

_Lifting himself on his right elbow, Steve tipped Danny’s face toward him. The blue of Danny’s eyes was deeper with the emotion in them, just like they’d been before. Sometimes, Steve told himself, was better than never._

_“You know I’m right where I want to be.” The truth was layered with multiple meanings. Steve drew back slightly, then nudged forward. He needed to hold onto this, just for a little more. “I love you.”_

_“I love you more,” Danny said, and in that moment those words, too, were truth._

_Steve leaned and kissed Danny’s welcoming mouth. He trailed his left hand down around Danny, stroked with a sure hand. He smiled into the kiss as Danny moaned and pushed against him, his own body reacting as it always did. He thrust into Danny, smooth and careful, riding the slow wave of desire and Danny, Danny, Danny._

Steve shook his head clear of thoughts that were futile and inappropriate, given the sniffling twelve-year-old girl beside him. His head hurt, his heart ached. Grace’s visits were infrequent now, not by Rachel’s call or a judge’s, but Danny’s. Danny knew. That was the worst of it, he thought sometimes, that Danny knew and still had no control. It would get better, he had to believe that. It already had since those first, horrible days. They got Danny more often than they used to, and that wasn't something to ignore.

“Why can’t he be my dad again, Steve?” Grace whispered. “It isn’t fair. I want him back.”

Yes, Steve knew all the words he should say. 

“I do too,” Steve said, and dug his toes into the sand.


End file.
